With no wiggle room, Trump tries to buck up support for health care bill

Friday

Jul 14, 2017 at 8:22 PMJul 14, 2017 at 8:22 PM

Fifty of the 52 Republican senators must back the bill in an initial vote planned for next week or, facing solid Democratic opposition, it will lose. Two GOP senators have already said they'll vote "no."

By Alan FramThe Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and other administration officials lobbied Republicans on Friday from both sides of the Atlantic to keep the Senate GOP's reworked health care bill from crashing, with the president saying wavering senators "must come through."

But the measure, culminating the GOP's seven years of pledging to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, encountered turbulence from two influential Republican governors and the nation's largest doctors' group. That complicated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's task of preventing even a single additional GOP senator from rejecting the legislation, which would kill it.

"After all of these years of suffering thru ObamaCare, Republican Senators must come through as they have promised!" the president tweeted before departing Paris, where he attended Bastille Day ceremonies.

McConnell, R-Ky., refashioned the legislation to attract GOP votes, two weeks after retreating on an initial version that would have died for lack of Republican support. The new package added language letting insurers sell discount-priced policies with minimal coverage aimed at winning over conservatives, and revised funding formulas that would mean federal money for states including Louisiana and Alaska — home to four GOP senators.

Fifty of the 52 Republican senators must back the bill in an initial vote McConnell plans for next week or, facing solid Democratic opposition, it will lose. GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Kentucky's Rand Paul have said they'll vote "no," leaving McConnell no wiggle room.

Trump's team tried winning over Republican Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, who's said GOP proposals to cut the Medicaid health care program for low-income people would unacceptably hurt the state. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., facing a difficult reelection battle next year, has taken the same stance, and Republicans believe one pathway to Heller's vote is through the popular governor.

Sandoval told The Associated Press that McConnell's latest measure has Medicaid cuts that remained "a big concern for me." He said the bill had money states could use to mitigate those reductions that "could be a good thing," but said he needed more information.

The bill would halt the extra money Obama's law provides for states that expand Medicaid, which Nevada has used to add 200,000 beneficiaries to its program, and curtail its future growth.

Further complicating McConnell's effort, Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich called the revised measure "still unacceptable," largely because of its Medicaid cuts. That's a concern also voiced by another Senate holdout, Ohio Republican Rob Portman.

Also weighing in was the American Medical Association, the physicians' organization, which said Medicaid cuts and "inadequate subsidies" in the bill would lead to "millions of Americans losing health insurance coverage."

Like legislation the House passed after its own struggles, the Senate bill would get rid of Obama's mandates for individuals to buy insurance and for companies to offer it and repeal many of its tax increases.

The rewritten package would add $70 billion to the $112 billion McConnell originally sought that states could use to help insurers curb the growth of consumers' out-of-pocket costs. And it has an added $45 billion for states to combat the misuse of drugs like opioids.